When I closed my
eyes I could see Peter's tense figure bending over
Blackie at the wheel, and heard his labored breathing as
he struggled in his mad fury, and felt again the helpless
horror that had come to me as we swerved off the road and
into the ditch below, with Blackie, rigid and desperate,
still clinging to the wheel. I lived it all over and
over in my mind. In the midst of the blackness I heard
a sentence that cleared the fog from my mind, and caused
me to raise myself from my pillows.
Some one--Norah, I think--had said that Blackie was
conscious, and that he was asking for some of the men at
the office, and for me. For me! I rose and dressed, in
spite of Norah's protests. I was quite well, I told
them. I must see him. I shook them off with trembling
fingers and when they saw that I was quite determined
they gave in, and Von Gerhard telephoned to the hospital
to learn the hour at which I might meet
the others who were to see Blackie for a brief moment.
I met them in the stiff little waiting room of he
hospital--Norberg, Deming, Schmidt, Holt--men who had
known him from the time when they had yelled, "Heh, boy!"
at him when they wanted their pencils sharpened.
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